The subject matter disclosed herein relates to presenting inspection data. More specifically, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to sorting and/or providing inspection data using a graphical filter.
Certain equipment and facilities, such as power generation equipment and facilities, oil and gas equipment and facilities, aircraft equipment and facilities, manufacturing equipment and facilities, and the like, include a plurality of interrelated systems, and processes. For example, power generation plants may include turbine systems and processes for operating and maintaining the turbine systems. Likewise, oil and gas operations may include carbonaceous fuel retrieval systems and processing equipment interconnected via pipelines. Similarly, aircraft systems may include airplanes and maintenance hangars useful in maintaining airworthiness and providing for maintenance support. During equipment operations, the equipment may degrade, encounter undesired conditions such as corrosion, wear and tear, and so on, potentially affecting overall equipment effectiveness. Certain inspection techniques, such as non-destructive inspection techniques or non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques, may be used to detect undesired equipment conditions.
NDT relates to the examination of an object, material, or system without reducing future usefulness. In particular NDT inspections may be used to determine the integrity of a product using time-sensitive inspection data relating to a particular product. For example, NDT inspections may observe the “wear and tear” of a product over a particular time-period.
Many forms or modalities of NDT are currently known. For example, perhaps the most common NDT method is visual examination. During a visual examination, an inspector may, for example, simply visually inspect an object for visible imperfections. Alternatively, visual inspections may be conducted using optical technologies such as a computer-guided camera, a borescope, etc. Radiography is another form of NDT. Radiography relates to using radiation (e.g., x-rays and/or gamma rays) to detect thickness and/or density changes to a product, which may denote a defect in the product. Further, ultrasonic testing relates to transmitting high-frequency sound waves into a product to detect changes and/or imperfections to the product. Using a pulse-echo technique, sound it introduced into the product and echoes from the imperfections are returned to a receiver, signaling that the imperfection exists. Many other forms of NDT exist. For example, magnetic particle testing, penetrant testing, electromagnetic testing, leak testing, and acoustic emission testing, to name a few.
Oftentimes, product inspections may be quite complex due to the complex nature of the product being tested. For example, airplanes are very complex machines where safety and inspection standards are of the utmost importance. The Boeing 777 aircraft may have as many 3 million parts. Accordingly, a tremendous amount of time and effort is used to inspect these aircraft on a periodic basis. Further, historical data relating to previous inspections may be used to compare and contrast inspection results to understand trending data. Further, inspection data for an entire fleet of products (e.g., a fleet of Boeing 777's) may be useful for inspection purposes. As may be appreciated, massive amounts of data may be gathered and used in the inspection process.
Unfortunately, in conventional inspection systems, the presentation of data may inundate NDT operators or personnel with a massive amount of information regarding inspection. As increased inspection data is provided to these inspection systems, it may become increasingly difficult to filter inspection data in an efficient way, such that targeted data may be accessed. Accordingly, improved systems and methods for filtering inspection data are desirable.